Word: frenchmen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Looking back last week on the seven months between the demise of the Fourth Republic and the final emergence of De Gaulle's Fifth Republic, Frenchmen could see much undone, but also much under way. And one thing deserved a cheer. "For the first time in our history," said René Coty in his farewell speech, "a revolution, a necessary and constructive revolution, has been carried out in a spirit of calm and respect for the laws...
Today, those three ominous weeks in May seem a world away; if they did not justify the worst of fears, it was because all Frenchmen knew that they had a man to fall back on. Charles de Gaulle, with the spontaneous support of his countrymen, has restored the supremacy of internal law and given France a new constitution that for the first time in 88 years endows the executive branch with enough authority to pursue coherent policies. He has all but destroyed the Communist Party as an active factor in French government, has laid the groundwork for a fruitful...
...most educational in De Gaulle's life. After abandoning active efforts at a political comeback in 1953, he continued to drive into Paris from Colombey once a week to hold court in his Spartan Left Bank office on the Rue de Solferino. And because he remained for many Frenchmen a kind of father figure, men of every political current called to confide in him. Without ever soliciting information, De Gaulle became perhaps the best-informed man in France on the inner workings and gaping inadequacies of the Fourth Republic...
Even more educational was the composition of his memoirs. Painstakingly set down in elongated script, the memoirs were written in a classic prose Frenchmen had not seen in a long time?precise yet lyrical, stamped with honor, revealing the essential selflessness of a man dedicated to his nation's grandeur. On the strength of this literary achievement, France's intellectuals?who do so much to set their country's political tone?for the first time gave De Gaulle their wholehearted admiration.* And in the act of reducing his life to book form, the general reviewed his past mistakes, sketched...
...long way to go. In fact, his very conditions for returning to power?that he be summoned on his own unquestioned terms?made it necessary for circumstances to be almost beyond retrieving before he would take over. The slope that lies before him is steep. Wonders Socialist Guy Mollet: "Frenchmen expect miracles of De Gaulle. But can he work miracles...